"Why has somebody ordered the test?" she asked. "If you don’t think you’ve-"
"They put me in for a commission," Joe said. "Some asshole-oh, shit! Sorry, Ma’am."
He’s going to be an officer? Is that what he means?
"Some asshole what. Sergeant?" Barbara said.
"Somebody forgot to send me for the test," Joe said. "And now that Commander ... he thinks I’ve got it."
"And you don’t?"
"I know I don’t," Joe said.
Barbara pulled the needle from his vein, dabbed at the puncture with an alcohol swab, and told him to bend his arm.
"Well, we’ll soon know for sure, won’t we?" she said.
It will come back negative,she thought. I know it will come back negative. Up yours, Lieutenant Gower, Ma’am!
(Six)
Officers’ Sales Store
U.S. Naval Base
San Diego, California
1100 Hours 3 February 1942
To Joe Howard, the Officers’ Sales Store looked like a cross between a supply room and a civilian clothing store. There were glass-topped counters, and shelves loaded with shirts and skivvies, and racks containing jackets and trousers. There were even mannequins showing what the well-dressed Naval or Marine Corps officer should wear. Even two mannequins of Navy nurses, one wearing blues and the other summer whites.
He had a semi-erotic thought: Here there were no female mannequins in underwear, as there were in civilian department stores. That was just as well; those always made him feel a little uncomfortable. It didn’t take him long to guess why that thought popped into his mind: the nurse at the hospital yesterday. It would be a long time before the image of her brassiere and the soft, swelling flesh above it faded from his mind.
Jesus, she was a looker!
"Can I help you, Sergeant?"
It was a plump and middle-aged Storekeeper First Class, obviously the man in charge. He looked ridiculous in his bell-bottomed pants and blouse, Joe thought. The Navy’s enlisted men’s uniform was worn by everybody but chief petty officers. It didn’t look bad on young guys. But on middle-aged guys like this one, with a paunch and damned little hair, it looked silly.
"I need some uniforms," Joe said, and handed the Storekeeper First a copy of his brand-new orders.
Paragraph One said that Staff Sergeant Joseph L. Howard, USMC, was honorably discharged from the Naval Service for the convenience of the government.
Paragraph Two said that First Lieutenant Joseph L. Howard, USMCR, was ordered to active duty, for the duration of the war plus six months, with duty station 2ndJoint Training Command, San Diego, Cal.
"Well, you came to the right place," the Storekeeper First said. "It’s going to cost you."
"I figured," Joe said.
He had a lot of money in his pocket, so it didn’t matter. They had brought his pay up to date for his discharge. And they had returned to him the savings money they had been taking out of his pay every month; the government had been paying him three percent on it. He had been saving money since he’d come in the Corps, redepositing it when he shipped over. Now it had all been returned to him. Officers were expected to manage their own money, not have their hands held by the Corps to encourage them to put a little aside.
There was even more. He had been paid for his unused accrued leave, and for what it would have cost him to go to his Home of Record. And Captain Stecker had told him that when he drew his first pay as an officer, he would be paid for what it took to come from Birmingham out here. And finally, there was a one-time payment of three hundred dollars for uniforms.
The Storekeeper First was far more helpful than Joe had expected him to be. And in a remarkably short time, one of the glass counters was stacked high with the uniforms Joe would need as an officer.
The three-hundred-dollar uniform allowance didn’t come close to covering the cost of the uniforms. The officer’s brimmed cap alone, for example, with just one cover-and he needed four more covers-came to $19.65. The covers were expensive, because Marine officers’ covers-unlike Army and Navy officers’ covers-had woven loops sewn to their tops. These were now purely decorative, but they went back to the days of sailing ships, Joe remembered hearing somewhere. Marine sharpshooters in the rigging could distinguish their officers on deck below because of woven line loops sewn on top of their caps.
Aside from the Sam Browne leather belt ($24.35), there wasn’t much outward difference between officers’ and enlisted men’s greens. Officers’ trousers had hip pockets, and enlisted men’s trousers did not. The quality of the material was better.
The only alteration Joe required was the hemming of the trousers. The chubby little Storekeeper First said he would have a seamstress hem one pair immediately, and Joe could pick up the rest the next afternoon. Joe suspected he was getting a little better service than most people. The Storekeeper First was probably one of the enlisted men who was pleased when a peer became an officer. A lot of people resented Mustangs.
When the Storekeeper First helped Joe into his blouse, expertly buttoning the epaulet over the crosspiece of the Sam Browne belt, the reason why he was being so obliging came out.
"I can offer you a little something for your enlisted stuff," he said. "Not much, because it’s nowhere near new, but as much as you’d get hocking it off the base."
Joe had not considered getting rid of his old uniforms; still, all of them were in a duffel bag in the trunk of Captain Stecker’s Ford, which he had borrowed.
"Make me an offer," he said. "I’ve got a duffel bag full."
"Here?"
"Outside. In the trunk of a car."
"Let’s go look at it, maybe we can do a little business."
"I’m not sure I’m allowed to wear this yet," Joe said, staring at the image of First Lieutenant Joseph Howard, USMCR, in a three-way mirror. He found what he saw very pleasing-yet unreal enough to make him feel uncomfortable.
"Why not?"
"I don’t get sworn in until half past two."
"You’re supposed to get sworn in in uniform," the Storekeeper First said, "Officer’s uniform. Nobody’s going to say anything."
"You’re sure?"
"You aren’t the first Mustang to come through here."
"OK," Joe said. "When they throw me in the brig, I can quote you, right?"
"Absolutely," the Storekeeper First said. "Pay for this, and then we’ll go see what you’ve got in the car."
The price the Storekeeper First offered for all of Joe’s enlisted men’s uniforms was insulting. He was being raped, but he could think of nothing to do about it. He could, of course, tell him to go fuck himself, in which case when he returned to The Officers’ Sales Store for the rest of his new uniforms tomorrow, they wouldn’t be ready. Or worse.
He managed to get the total price up to $52.50, but beyond that the Storekeeper First not only wouldn’t budge, he showed signs of getting nasty.
"Sold to the man in the bell-bottom pants," Joe said, forcing a smile.
"A pleasure doing business with you, Lieutenant," the Storekeeper First said as he hoisted Joe’s duffel bag onto his shoulder.
"Don’t forget my fifty-two-fifty," Joe said.
"I’ll have it for you tomorrow."
"You can have the stuff tomorrow, then," Joe said.
"You don’t trust me?"